Vermont 1745-1912 with a Narrative History Brattleboro
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Early Maps of Brattleboro Vermont 1745-1912 With a Narrative History Brattleboro Fort Dummer VT NH MASS Topographic Map of the Brattleboro Area This topographic map shows Brattleboro and the Connecticut River Valley in modern times. The white areas on the map indicate the locations of fertile floodplain land which first drew settlers to this valley in the early 1700s. Northfield (bottom of map) was the northernmost settlement until 1724, when a small military outpost, Fort Dummer, was built to protect Northfield and other downstream settlements. Earlyof Maps Brattleboro Vermont 1745-1912 With a Narrative History Published on the Occasion of the 250th Anniversary of the Chartering of Brattleboro December 2003 By David Allen © Old Maps West Chesterfield, NH 03466 www.old-maps.com 1 Foreword This collection of Brattleboro’s early maps is published to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the chartering of Brattleboro, Vermont in 1753. Reproduced in this volume are more than forty old town and village maps, tracing Brattleboro’s history from first settlement until the early 20th century. The oldest maps are the 1733 map which depicts Fort Dummer as a lonely trading post and the 1745 town outline map which shows the “Equivalent Land”. The latest map is a 1912 fire insurance map of the urban center of Brattleboro. The maps include the simple outline maps from the colonial period, and all the known “land ownership” maps – remarkably detailed maps which show homeowner names next to the locations of their home- steads. Of note also are fire insurance maps which depict great detail in downtown Brattleboro, and the charming 1856,1876 and 1886 bird’s-eye views. Several modern maps are included to help the reader associate the old maps with present day Brattleboro. A transcription of the 1753 Town Charter is also supplied, along with several sketches depicting the lands described in that founding document of Brattleboro history. The maps are arranged (generally) in chronological order and are sorted into several numbered groups. The land ownership maps are arranged with downtown and town maps in separate groups to allow for easy comparisons. In this book we use the word “town” in its classic New England sense, refering to the entire township, and “downtown” as the compact developed area, both commercial and residential. Maps are oriented to north, unless otherwise indicated. This publication is issued in two formats: as a softcover paper booklet, and as a CDROM. The CD contains JPEG image files of all the maps(some in color), complete copies of the Brattleboro maps which are printed here on several pages, and the text. The text on the CD is in Adobe PDF format. We hope that this volume of old maps encourages further study of these maps and of the history of Brattleboro. The publisher welcomes comments and suggestions for a future edition of this book. There will be a new volume if we can get some more maps and interesting historical data. This book would not have been possible without the assistance of several institutions and individuals, notably the Brattleboro Historical Society, the Vermont Historical Society, the Dartmouth College Li- brary, and the New Hampshire State Library. Special thanks are due to Dana Sprague for his encouraging words and generous grants of his maps and his time, to Sara Campbell whose love of history and editorial skills are indispensable; to Thomas St. John for being a helpful guide to Brattleboro’s history and a thoughtful critic; to Jeff Nugent for knowing so much about roads and the development of Brattleboro; to the Book Cellar for helping to distribute these books; to Photo Ark Digital Imaging of Woodstock,Ver- mont for enhancing hard-to-read originals; and to several others who helped with ideas and review of this book, among them Walt Harrington, Paul Carnahan, Vicki McCormick, and Robert Riecken. -David Allen Some other publications by Old maps: Early Maps of Greenfield, MA Early Maps of Hinsdale, NH Early Maps of Winchester, NH Early Maps of Swanzey, NH Early Maps of Keene, NH Map of Cheshire County, 1858 Atlas of Cheshire County, 1877 Cheshire County: The Early Maps 1753-1816 McClellan’s Map of Windham County, 1856, VT (CDROM) For ordering information, see the web site www.old-maps.com, or write to the publisher at Old Maps, PO Box 54, West Chesterfield, NH 03466. 2 Table of Contents Topographic Map of the Brattleboro Area Inside front cover Title 1 Foreword 2 Table of Contents 3 1. Introduction 5 2. The Equivalent Lands & Fort Dummer 6 3. The 1753 Charter and First Settlers 10 4. Early Land Divisions - New York Period 12 5. Early Roads and Villages 16 6. Introduction to Land Ownership Maps & Birds Eye Views 22 7. Land Ownership Maps & Bird’s Eye Views – Downtown 24 8. Land Ownership Maps - West Brattleboro 50 9. Land Ownership Maps - Entire Town 54 10. Fire Insurance Maps - Main Street 66 11. The Brattleboro Town Charter 70 Bibliography 72 List of Maps 73 Modern Maps of Brattleboro 74 Brattleboro Timeline & Population Graph 76 Topographic Map of Downtown Brattleboro Inside back cover 3 Fort Dummer New England’s Northwestern Frontier in the 1740s Map 1 ca. 1745 by William Douglass. The land we now call Brattleboro was at the edge of New England’s western frontier in the 1740s, a time of hardship and danger for the few people who lived within “The Equivalent Land” along the Connecticut River. Fort Dummer, shown on the west side of the Connecticut River, was the first permanent settlement in Brattleboro and the first English settlement in Vermont. The towns shown here were all created by Massachusetts - there would be no Vermont for decades after this map. The Merrimack River is on the right side of the map; Lake Winnepesaukee is at the upper right. Most of the towns shown to the north and northeast of Fort Dummer were towns in name only. Very few people lived above Fort Dummer during this period of struggle between the French and English for control of North America. 4 Early Maps of Brattleboro, Vermont 1745-1912 1. Introduction Brattleboro came into being in the early decades of the 1700s, during a turbulent time in the history of northern New England. European settlers were moving upriver into the wilderness from the older Connecticut Valley towns of Deerfield and Northfield. These English speaking settlers were not always welcomed by the native peoples - the Indians - who resisted, sometimes with force, the intrusions by Europeans onto the lands they used. Here, on a site of level land below the West River, a small wooden fort was built, in 1724, to protect downstream settlements. Fort Dummer was in continuous use for a generation as a military garrison and a trading post. Here familes were raised, and the English speaking history of Vermont began. Unmapped wilderness lay to the north and west of Fort Dummer as shown on our first map. Map 1 is an excerpt from a much larger map of Massachusetts and New Hampshire by William Douglass. A detail of the Brattleboro area is shown on this page, with the town of Brattleboro lying within the “Equivalent Land”*, a large tract of land at the edge of the western frontier. The towns depicted here were all established by Massachusetts, which claimed all the land shown on this part of the map. The oldest town on the detail map is Northfield, which then included Vernon, Vermont and Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Northfield was established in 1672, and was the northernmost settlement until the early 1700s. The heavy shaded line is the New Hampshire / Massachusetts line, which was set by the English Detail from Map 1. The area which would become King in 1741. There was no Vermont in the early Brattleboro is the lower third of the “Equivalent Land” on years. The town called Canada to Gallop is now the west side of the Connecticut River. Note the location of ca. 1745 Guilford, Fall Fight Town is Bernardston, Mass., Fort Dummer just above the old Guilford (“Canada to Chesterfield is township “No. 1” (east side of Gallop”) line. the river), next to ‘Lower & Upper Ashuelot” (Swanzey & Keene, New Hampshire). It is interesting that this very old map shows the two principal waterways in Brattleboro by their present names, the West River and Whetstone River (Brook). To protect the pioneers in the Connecticut River Valley, the Province of Massachusetts decided that a fort should be established upriver from Northfield. * While the Douglass map refers to this tract in the singular, in this book we will use the more common expression the “Equivalent Lands” 5 2. The Equivalent Lands and Fort Dummer The “Equivalent Lands” covered most of today’s Putney, Dummerston and Brattleboro - about 44,000 acres. That unusual title came about as the result of a Provincial boundary adjustment. When the Massachusetts / Connecticut boundary was settled in the early 1700s, Connecticut lost some land, and Massachusetts agreed to compensate Connecticut by giving that Province some land as an equivalent for lands lost. The “equivalents”, which included two other tracts beside this one, were sold by Connecticut to raise money for Yale College, and the buyers in turn sold this 44,000 acre tract to four men including William Brattle. The Equivalent Lands were never mapped as far as we know, but there is a written description in the Connecticut Archives. The description records a twelve mile long tract of land starting “...at the northward end of the Great Meadow ...“ (Putney) and then proceeding downstream to “...the mouth of the brook that emptieth itself unto Connecticut river at the lower end of the Meadow, about three miles southward of the West river...” The description then follows general bearings to the west, north and east as shown on the sketch map which we have prepared for this publication.